Cops Serve Up Warrant To Make Apple Serve Up Details From Texas Church Shooter’s iPhone

Here we go again.

Texas Rangers have obtained a search warrant for the contents of an iPhone SE belonging to the gunman who killed 26 people in a murder-suicide at a church. This search warrant compels Apple to not only hand over that info, but any info on his iCloud account as well. Specifically, they want all messages, calls, social media passwords, contacts, photos, videos and other data since January 1, 2016, from the iPhone and iCloud account.

For what it’s worth, LG also got served with a warrant compelling them to serve up details from one of their phones too.

Now this poses a problem for Apple. If the cops were quick enough, they could have used the dead shooter’s fingerprints to open the phone and take what they wanted. But that option isn’t on the table as you have to enter the passcode on an iPhone if Touch ID hasn’t been used in several hours. Since they don’t know the passcode, off to Apple they go. Now Apple maintains a policy of handing over data stored on iCloud to cops who show up armed with a warrant. But getting info from a locked and encrypted iPhone is not possible for Apple. Because of that, it sets up the possibility that this may go the way of how the whole episode with the San Fernando Shooter’s phone went. Which is sideways. Thus you’ll want to stay tuned to this to see how this turns out because it’s bound to get contentious.